How Bill Cosby’s First Drug Accuser Used a Tabloid Smear to Silence Bill Cosby

The article fails to make clear the sequence of events. Beth Ferrier contacted the National Enquirer after reading about the police investigating the complaint by Andrea Constand. Constand told the Philadelphia Police that a year earlier, in response to her request for herbal medicine to relieve her stress, Bill Cosby gave her a drug that caused her to lose consciousness and engaged in sex with her. She woke up with her clothes disheveled.

After reading about the police investigation, Ferrier contacted the National Enquirer and said that after a consensual affair, she also believed that Bill Cosby gave her drugs (in her coffee) and she was also knocked out and awoke with her clothes disheveled. The National Enquirer gave her $7,500 for her story. While it is true that she passed a lie detector test, the National Enquirer has a crew of special people who give these lie detector tests and almost always finds the person truthful. They have given these same lie detector tests to numerous people who claimed UFO abduction and they passed.

The police charges were then dismissed against Cosby. Incidentally the fact that Bruce Castor, the Philadelphia district attorrney who investigated the case, thought that Cosby did something “inappropriate” does not mean that he thought that he drugged and engaged in sex with Ms. Constand. Naturally when a 30 year old beautiful single woman sleeps alone over the house of a 65 year old married man, one thinks that something “inappropriate happened.” At the time he dismissed the case he said that he felt that both Constand and Cosby were being less than truthful. Cosby said that he had given her benadryl, an over the counter medication, and she had slept over. He denied the sexual allegation.

With the police investigation over, and Cosby found innocent, the allegation by Beth Ferrier looked ridiculous on the surface. First it was a 20 year old allegation that she had told nobody about and only remembered it after reading about the police investigation of Cosby in the National Enquirer, which everybody knows pays sources for gossip and outrageous stories. Secondly, Ferrier’s story made no logical sense. He had already had consensual sex with her. According to her, he had stopped the relationship. Why drug her to have sex with her when she was willing to have sex with him? Cosby could not have known how crazy her story was. The National Enquirer almost certainly offered the deal to Cosby: give them an exclusive story about the Constand police investigation case, and they would not run the second allegation story. Since Cosby had felt that the newspaper had played a positive role in the the investigation of his son’s murder, it made perfect sense for Cosby to agree to the interview. Constand’s lawyers, I believe at this point had either filed their civil suit against Cosby or had announced they were going to file one. Knowing about a second woman who claimed the same thing as Constand would certainly help Cosby’s defense team to fight the lawsuit.

The law suit that Constand filed in 2006 regarding the story being squashed was against the National Enquirer and Cosby’s lawyer. It was not against Cosby.

This article makes it seem that Cosby was in cahoots with the National Enquirer to suppress stories of him drugging women. One could just as well, and perhaps see it more accurately, as the National Enquirer pressuring and tricking Cosby into giving an exclusive interview about the recent police case rather than running a copycat article about a 20 year old unsubstantiated incident by a woman they had paid $7,500.

Beth Ferrier later became Jane Doe #5 in Constand’s civil suit against Cosby.

Beth Ferrier’s allegation that after discontinuing their relationship, Cosby invited her to his dressing room, gave her cappuccino, and may have had sex with her still makes no sense. It makes far more sense believing that Ferrier still had unresolved issues with Cosby for breaking off the relationship and wanted the money from the National Enquirer. Simply saying she had a brief consensual love affair with Cosby twenty years before would not have gotten her any money from the sensationalist National Enquirer.

It also seems far more probable that the National Enquirer outfoxed Cosby into granting an exclusive interview in return for not running a highly improbable and impossible to verify story. He could hardly have sort to squash a story that he knew nothing about until the National Enquirer told him about it.

This February 1, 2006 lawsuit by Constand’s lawyers was aimed at silencing Bill Cosby. On April 20, 2005, Constand’s lawyers had filed papers claiming that there were ten “Jane Doe” witnesses who had also been assaulted by Cosby. Cosby did not know the names of any of these ten Jane Does. Constand’s lawyers kept them from Cosby’s lawyers. Despite filings in the case to gain that information, Cosby’s lawyers still did not know the names of the ten “Jane Does” at this point. This additional lawsuit was to let Cosby know that even after the names of the Jane Does were released, he still would not be able to defend himself in the media against their charges. All the public knew was that the accuser’s lawyers had ten women willing to testify against Cosby. Thus nobody could be sure if Cosby was guilty or not. This brought intense pressure on Cosby to settle the Constand lawsuit. His lawyers could not be sure if any of the Jane Does (whose number grew to 12) had a credible case or not.

This article, like all mainstream articles gets things upside down. Bill Cosby was the one being silenced in this case, the accusers were the only ones allowed to speak against him in the media and to put pressure on him to settle the case before he could be tried and found innocent.

3 comments

Of course, Cosby’s actions as a serial rapist, make no sense to the normal, decent, law-abiding citizen. We have great difficulty “getting into a serial rapists” mind. Psychologists have already explained this behavior on his part. He wants to be completely in control. Ferier is not the only former lover to come forward and describe
how he drugged then, even though he didn’t have to. Decency may not “make sense”
out of evil, but that doesn’t mean evil doesn’t happen!

Thank you for your comment, Caroline, but I am afraid that Occam’s razor forces us to reject this entirely dubious and ridiculous psychological explanation.
The explanation that Cosby got sexual pleasure from having sex with sleeping women is question begging. It assumes that Cosby is guilty and finds a fantastic psychological explanation for the fantastic stories told by his accusers. Outside of the ten or so women accusing him of drugging them and having sex with them, there is no basis to believe that Dr. Cosby has this rare condition. It is like ten children saying that they heard Santa Claus coming down the chimney on Christmas eve and assuming that they are telling the truth and a man suffering from Santa Claus Personality Syndrome dressed as Santa Claus actually came down their chimneys. There may be some men who imagine themselves to be Santa Claus and come down chimneys on Christmas, but clearly, the simpler explanation is that the children simply imagined the event.
Cosby having this type of rare psychological profile is a fantastic and absurd answer to the valid question of why Bill Cosby would drug and rape women when he did not have to do it to have sex. The obvious true answer is that these alleged drugging and rapes did not happen except in the imaginations of the women accusers. The fantastic and absurd answer of Cosby’s bizarre psychology also does not explain why all these women waited so long to tell anybody about the experience of being drugged and sexually assaulted by one of the most famous actors in the world. The second simple and obvious answer does.

First, Ferrier initially contacted The National Enquirer, not to sell her story, but in order to get Constand’s contact information. Ferrier had read about Constand’s case in the Enquirer. When The Enquirer found out why Ferrier was contacting them, they wanted to interview her.

After the police investigation was over, Cosby’s defence team found out about the impending interview the Enquirer was about to run with Ferrier. Cosby then threatened to sue them. After much negotiation and wrangling, Cosby offered the Enquirer an exclusive interview with him in exchange for spiking the Ferrier interview. Both sides agreed to this and Ferrier was allowed to keep her promised fee.

Second, it doesn’t matter whether Ferrier had a consensual relationship with Cosby. Sexual assault is still a crime, in any relationship, including marriage.

Third, in her civil suit against Cosby, Constand fought to protect the identities of the Jane Does. Cosby countered with a request to have ALL filings be kept under seal, including all discovery documents, an unusual legal move. When the media found this out, they filed a request to prevent any filings from being sealed. The judge ultimately compromised and allowed some filings to be sealed, including the names of the Jane Does, while other documents remained public.

Fourth, the Feb 1, 2006 suit by Constand against The Enquirer and Cosby’s lawyer (Singer) was a defamation suit to redress false statements made by both named defendants as to Constand’s motivations for her civil suit. The Enquirer and Cosby had falsely stated that Constand had “demanded money” in an attempt to extort Cosby. It was not a lawsuit to silence Cosby (only to silence his false allegations). This case was dismissed with prejudice with the agreement by all parties in November 2006.

No one was being silenced. Cosby was free to defend himself in public, give all kinds of interviews and impugn his accusers motives. His accusers were free to pursue legal action and also do interviews accusing Cosby of assaulting them.